Songs similar in spirit to that of the Irish Droleen boys were popularly sung by the Greeks. In D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," may be found translations of "the crow song," and "the swallow song;" between which and the Irish wren song the resemblance is very striking. "Swallow-singing or chelidonising, as the Greek term is," was, it appears, a method of collecting eleemosynary gifts in the month of Boedromion or August. We think D'Israeli is right in his opinion that there is probably a closer connection between the custom which produced the songs of the crow and the swallow and that of our northern mummeries, than may be at first sight suspected. The subject of mumming we have elsewhere treated at some length; but this curious variety of the practice, and the manner in which it seems to connect the subject with the ceremonies of the Greeks, we could not allow ourselves wholly to omit. NEW YEAR'S EVE. 31ST DECEMBER. THIS is the last day of the year, and the feelings which belong to it are of a tangled yarn. Regrets for the past are mingled with hopes of the future; and the heart of man, between the meeting years, stands like the head of Janus looking two ways. The day and eve which precede the New Year are marked, in England, by few outward observances, save such as are common to the season; and it is in the peculiar trains of thought to which they give rise that they have a character of their own. In Scotland, on the other hand, the festival of this season is, since the Reformation, nearly limited to these two days; and the last day of the year is distinguished both by omens and by customs peculiar to itself. In Mr. Stewart's "Popular Superstitions of the Highlands," there is an account of some of these omens, as they were gathered, at no distant period, in that land of mist and mystery; and a singular example may be mentioned in the auguries drawn from what was called the Candlemas bull. The term Candlemas, which has been given to this season, in Scotland and elsewhere, is supposed to have had its origin in some old religious ceremonies which were performed by candle light; and the bull was a passing cloud, which in Highland imagination assumed the form of that animal, and from whose rise or fall, or motions generally on this night, the seer prognosticated good or bad weather. Something of the same kind is mentioned in Sir John Sinclair's "Statistical Account of Scotland," who explains more particularly the auguries gathered from the state of the atmosphere on New Year's Eve. The superstition in question, however, is not peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland, but shared with the northern European nations in general, most of whom assigned portentous qualities to the winds of New Year's Eve.